Sometimes God is pleased to use a few words to awaken a soul. Such was the case some years ago, in the following remarkable manner.
The porters at the Sheffield station had cried, "Take your seats for Derby and the south!" I saw a man making every effort to reach the train before it started. It was a struggle. "All right!" shouted the guard.
The engineer answered with a whistle. The train moved. The man had made it safely.
He dropped into a seat by my side. Slam went the door. I said, "And the door shall be shut.”
I do not remember that another word passed between us. Two years later, when I had quite forgotten the circumstance, a friend of mine met with the same man, who told him that those words, "And the door shall be shut," produced such a solemn impression on his mind that he could not forget them. When he awoke in the morning, and all day long, they sounded in his ears. The madness and danger of delaying his salvation to the last moment became so evident that he believed that circumstance had been used of God in bringing him to Christ.
Reader, those are, indeed, solemn words in that prophetic parable of the ten virgins: "And the door was shut." The gospel train is fast filling. The last person will soon be in it. Then can you imagine what you would feel not to be just in time, but just too late? Will you be one who shall cry, "Lord, Lord, open to us"? The only answer then will be: "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity: I know you not." Receive the Savior now.